Introduction

n 2010, historian Monika Neugebauer-Wlk showed that the noun

esotericism occurs as early as 1792. In that year, it appeared in
German: Esoterik,1 in the context of debates concerning the secret
teachings of Pythagoras against a background of Freemasonry. In a
context with affinities to Romanticism, it first appeared in French in
1828 in Histoire critique du Gnosticisme et de son influence by Jacques
Matter (as Jean-Pierre Laurant pointed out in 1992). The term has
since revealed itself, in English and in other languages, as semantically expandable and permeable as one likes.
To question its etymology (eso refers to the idea of interiority,
and ter evokes an opposition) is hardly productive and often stems from
a need to discover what esotericism in itself would be (its true
nature). In fact, there is no such thing, although those who claim the
contrary are manythese individuals approaching it according to their
own definitions, in function of their own interests or ideological presuppositions. It seems more productive to us to begin by inventorying the
various meanings that it takes according to the speakers.

I. Five Meanings of the Word Esotericism

1. Meaning 1: A Disparate Grouping
In this meaning, which is the most current, esotericism appears, for
example, as the title of sections in bookshops and in much media
1. About that first know occurrence, see Monika Neugebauer-Wlks ground-breaking
article (in Aries 10:1, 2010). As she explains, that term Esoterik was from the pen
of Johann Philipp Gabler, who used it in his edition of Johann Gottfried Eichhorns
Urgeschichte (1792).

2010 State University of New York Press, Albany

discourse to refer to almost everything that exudes a scent of mystery.

Oriental wisdom traditions, yoga, mysterious Egypt, ufology, astrology
and all sorts of divinatory arts, parapsychology, various Kabbalahs,
alchemy, practical magic, Freemasonry, Tarot, New Age, New Religious
Movements, and channeling are found thus placed side by side (in
English, the label used in the bookshops is often Occult or Metaphysics).
This nebula often includes all sorts of images, themes, and motifs, such
as ontological androgyny, the Philosophers Stone, the lost Word, the
Soul of the World, sacred geography, the magic book, and so on.

2. Meaning 2: Teachings or Facts That Are Secret Because

They Are Deliberately Hidden
This is for example the discipline of the arcane, the strict distinction between the initiated and the profane. Thus, esoteric often is
employed as a synonym of initiatic, including by certain historians
treating doctrines that would have been kept secret, for example,
among the first Christians. For the wider public, it also refers to
the idea that secrets would have been jealously guarded during the
course of centuries by the church magisterium, such as the secret life
of Christ, his close relationship with Mary Magdaleneor that important messages would have been surreptitiously slipped into a work by
their author. Novels like the parodical Il Pendolo di Foucault (1988)
by Umberto Eco and the mystery-mongering The Da Vinci Code (2003)
by Dan Brown skillfully take advantage of the taste of a broad audience
for what belongs to the so-called conspiracy theories.

3. Meaning 3: A Mystery Is Inherent in Things Themselves

Nature would be full of occult signatures; there would exist invisible
relationships between stars, metals, and plants; human History would
also be secret, not because people would have wanted to hide certain
events, but because it would contain meanings to which the profane
historian would not have access. Occult philosophy, a term widely used
in the Renaissance, is in its diverse forms an endeavor to decipher
such mysteries. Similarly, some call the hidden God the esoteric
God (the one not entirely revealed.)
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4. Meaning 4: Gnosis, Understood as a Mode of Knowledge

Emphasizing the Experiential, the Mythical, the Symbolic, Rather
Than Forms of Expression of a Dogmatic and Discursive Order
The ways enabling one to gain this way of knowledge vary according to the schools; it is the subject of initiatic teachings given forth
in groups claiming to possess it, but sometimes it is also considered
as accessible without them. Understood in this way, esotericism often
is associated with the notion of religious marginality for those who
intend to make a distinction between the various forms of gnosis, and
the established traditions or the constituted religions.

5. Meaning 5: The Quest for the Primordial Tradition

The existence of a primordial Tradition is posited, of which the
various traditions and religions spread throughout the world would be
only fragmented and more or less authentic pieces. Here, esotericism
is the teaching of the ways that would permit attaining knowledge of
this Tradition or contributing to restore it. Nowadays, this teaching is
principally that of the Traditionalist School, also known as perennialism (chapter 5, section II), whose English-speaking representatives
readily use the word esoterism to distinguish themselves from most of
the other meanings of esotericism.
Despite certain relationships of proximity, these five meanings
evidently differ from one another. It is a matter of knowing which
one we are dealing with when someone employs this portmanteau
word (the same goes for other words, such as religion, sacred,
magic, spirituality, mysticism, etc.). Taken in the first sense, it
can refer to almost anything. Let us take the example of mysterious Egypt; still today, many authors take pleasure in uncovering an
esotericism in ancient Egypt present in the form of initiations and
sublime knowledge. Yet these practices scarcely existed in Ancient
Egypt, except in their own modern imaginaire2; and even supposing
2. In this context, imaginaire does not mean belief in things that are false or unreal
but refers to the representations that consciously or unconsciously underlie and/or
permeate a discourse, a conversation, a literary or artistic work, a current of thought, a
political or philosophical trend, and so forth. Thus understood, this term is sometimes
translated as the imaginary or the imaginary world (German: Weltbild), but in the
present book we keep the original French [Translators note].

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that they are partly right (which it is permitted to doubt), it would

never be a matter there of more than a form of religiosity present
in many religious systems, which it would be sufficient to call, for
example, sacred mysteries. It is no less legitimate and interesting,
for the historian, to study the various forms of egyptomania proper
to the Western esoteric currents because they are often part of their
thematic repertory. Furthermore, through intellectual laziness, people
often use the term esoteric to qualify particular images, themes, or
motifs that they readily lump together under the heading esoteric
(cf. infra, section I on the unicorn and similar notions).
The second sense encompasses both too much and too little
(besides the fact that, when there are secrets, they are generally open
ones). It includes too much, because the idea of deliberately hidden
things is universal. It includes too little, because it would be false to
call secrets a number of currents or traditions, as for exampleto
limit ourselves to the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth
centuryalchemy, neo-Alexandrian Hermetism, theosophy, Rosicrucianism. In fact, for its greater part, alchemy (both material and spiritual) is not secret because it has never ceased to make itself known
through abundant publications supplied to a wide public. Renaissance
Hermetism (see infra, section II) is never more than one of the manifestations of the humanist current, which addressed all the literate.
The theosophical writings have always circulated in the most varied
milieux, Christian and other. Rosicrucianism of the seventeenth century is mostly a sort of politico-religious program.
The idea according to which the real would be in great part
hidden by its very naturethird meaningis present in all cultures,
and, as it assumes various connotations in them, it is preferable to find
a more precise term to define each one of them. Similarly, concerning
the fourth meaningesotericism as a synonym of gnosisit can
seem pointless to complicate matters by not remaining content with this
second word. Certainly, a number of those who intend to speak of esotericism in itself attempt to find equivalent terms in cultures distinct
from ours (in India, in the Far East, etc.); but the point is not convincing because the terms thus employed do not possess the same semantic
charge and refer to very different meanings. The fifth meaning, finally,
also designates something relatively precise (a rather specific current of

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thought); at that point, it would be enough for the exterior observer

to employ the term perennialism rather than esotericism (although those
connected with this current have, of course, the right to use the second
term). Notwithstanding, and as we have seen, they themselves prefer,
in English, to speak of esoterism rather than esotericism.
For these various reasons, esotericism is understood (especially
since about the beginning of the 1990s; cf. infra, sections II, IV, and
V) in a sixth meaning for the majority of historians.

II. Sixth Meaning:

A Group of Specic Historical Currents
Indeed, these historians, as we did in our first works on the notion
of esotericism at the beginning of the 1990s (infra, section IV), have
preserved the word through sheer convenience (it had the merit of
already existing) to refer to the history of Western esoteric currents.
These currents, as we shall see, present strong similarities and are
found to have historical interconnections.
Western here refers to a Westa West permeated by Christian
culture and visited by Jewish or Muslim religious traditions, or even
Far Eastern ones, with which it cohabited but that are not identical
with it; in this understanding, Jewish Kabbalah does not belong to
this Western esotericism, whereas the so-called Christian Kabbalah
does. Of course, this choice, which is purely methodological, does not
imply any judgmental position whatsoever.
Among the currents that illustrate this Western esotericism
(in the sixth meaning) appear notably, for late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, the following ones: Alexandrian Hermetism (the Greek
writings attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus, second and
third centuries of our era); Christian Gnosticism, various forms of
neo-Pythagoreanism, speculative astrology, and alchemy. And for the
so-called modern period, let us cite especially, in the Renaissance, neoAlexandrian Hermetism, Christian Kabbalah (corpus of interpretations
of Jewish Kabbalah intending to harmonize it with Christianity), the
philosophia occulta, the so-called Paracelsian current (from the name
of the philosopher Paracelsus), and some of its derivatives. After the

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Renaissance, we have Rosicrucianism and its variants, as well as Christian theosophy, the Illuminism of the eighteenth century, a part of
romantic Naturphilosophie, the so-called occultist current (from the
mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth). According
to some representatives of this specialty, Western esotericism extends
over this vast field, from late Antiquity to the present (broad meaning).
According to other representatives of this same specialty, it is preferable
to understand it in a more restricted sense by limiting it to the so-called
modern period (from the Renaissance until today); they then speak
of a modern Western esotericism (restricted meaning).
This short book follows the second approach (restricted meaning), although the first chapter deals with the ancient and medieval
sources of the modern Western esoteric currents, that is to say, the first
fifteen centuries of our era. The reason for this choice is that starting
from the end of the fifteenth century new currents appeared, in a very
innovative fashion in the sense that they found themselves intrinsically connected with nascent modernity, to the point of constituting
a specific product. They in fact reappropriated, in a Christian light
but in original ways, elements having belonged to late Antiquity and
to the Middle Ages (such as Stoicism, Gnosticism, Hermetism, neoPythagoreanism). Indeed, only at the beginning of the Renaissance
did people begin to want to collect a variety of antique and medieval
materials of the type that concerns us, in the belief that they could
constitute a homogenous group. Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and others (chapter 2, section I) undertook to consider them
as mutually complementary, to seek their common denominators, as
far as postulating the existence of a philosophia perennis (a perennial
philosophy). Real or mythical, the representatives of the latter were
considered the links in a chain illustrated by Moses, Zoroaster, Hermes
Trismegistus, Plato, Orpheus, the Sibyls, and sometimes also by other
characters. Thus, for example, after the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain in 1492, Jewish Kabbalah penetrated into the Christian milieu
to find itself interpreted in the light of traditions (Alexandrian Hermetism, alchemy, Pythagoreanism, etc.) that were not Jewish.
Reasons of a theological order account, largely, for such a need to
have recourse to ancient traditions. For a long time, indeed, Christian-

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ity had preserved within it certain forms of knowledge that entered

into the field of theology (or theologies) and related to the connection between metaphysical principles and cosmology (the Aristotelian
second causes). But after theology had, little by little, discarded cosmology, that is to say, part of itself, then this vast field found itself
appropriated, reinterpreted from the outside (outside the theological
field) by an extra-theological attempt to connect the universal to the
particularto occupy the interface between metaphysics and cosmology. Many thinkers of the Renaissance tried to justify such an attempt
by resorting to certain traditions of the past.
To that attempt is added, as a corollary, the idea of revelations possible from within Revelation itself (to employ the felicitous
expression suggested by the historian Jean-Pierre Brach). In other
terms, believers who adhered to the teaching of their Church could
nevertheless benefit from a revelation not dispensed by the official
catechism (Revelation as it is taught), but which by its very nature
would be consistent with deepening the meaning and the content
of this catechism. Those who exploited the certitude of this inner
revelation tended rather to impersonal discourse, either by exhibiting a tradition to which they would have had access, a transmission
of which they would be the repositories, or by affirming themselves
graced with an inspiration come directly from on high. This idea is
very present, certainly, in the three great religions of the Book (where
it often finds itself challenged by the existing orthodoxies), but in the
Renaissance era it is also a means of enriching an official teaching felt
as impoverishedand it would remain very present in the history of
modern esoteric currents.
Finally, these three areas of discourse (the search for a perennial philosophy, the autonomization of an extra-theological discourse
in the subject of cosmology, and the idea of possible revelation from
within Revelation) constitute, particularly the first two, an essential
aspect of nascent modernity. For the latter, which then finds itself
confronted with itself, it is a matter of answering questions posed by
its own adventand not, as is too often believed, the response of a
sort of counter-culture directed against modernity. This remark is just
as applicable, as we shall see, to the subsequent esoteric currents.

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III. From the Religionist and Universalist Approach

to the Historico-Critical Approach
To treat esotericism understood in this sixth sense (supra, section II)
comes within a historico-critical mode of approach. We will return
(infra, sections IV, V) to the ways in which it is declined; but, before
that, it seems necessary to introduce another one, followed by many
authors who also intend to treat the history of esotericism. This
introduction will permit us, at the same time, to bring out some of
the implications with which meanings one to five are charged.
This second mode of approach rests either on a religionist
position, or on a universalist position, or again on both at the same
time. The first consists in positing that, to validly study a religion, a
tradition, a spiritual trend, and so onand, consequently, esotericismit is necessary to be a member of it oneself on pain of not
understanding very much about ithence the proselytizing tendency
frequently evinced by the supporters of this position. The second consists in postulating the existence of a universal esotericism of which
it would be a matter of discovering, of explicating the true nature;
we can remark that, in this type of discourse, esotericism is most of
the time synonymous with sacred in general, indeed of religion
understood sub specie aeternitatis.
The simultaneously religionist and universalist position is represented principally by the perennialist current evoked in section I,
which spread in most of the Western countries especially from the
mid-twentieth century. It will be (chapter 5, section II) the subject
of a specific discussion. The following are two examples of scholarly
religionists. In France, Robert Amadou, whose work is abundant; his
first significant work is entitled Loccultisme. Esquisse dun monde vivant
(1950). Occultism is here synonymous with esotericism understood
in the second, third, and fourth meanings at once; despite his somewhat universalizing bent, Amadou distinguishes himself strongly, let us
note, from perennialism (fifth meaning). In Germany, Gerhard Wehr,
who limits his field to the Western world and attempts, throughout
a series of high-quality monographs, to find concordances between
Rudolf Steiner, Carl Gustav Jung, Novalis, Jacob Boehme, and the
like, and who occasionally paints a picture of what is according to

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him Christian esotericism (Esoterisches Christentum, 1975 and 1995).

An example of a universalist is the academic Pierre Riffard, who
has posited (in Lsotrisme: Quest-ce que lsotrisme? Anthologie de
lsotrisme, 1990) the existence of a universal esotericism composed,
according to him, of eight invariables:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

The impersonality of the authors;

The opposition between the profane and the initiates;
The subtle;
Correspondences;
Numbers;
The occult sciences;
The occult arts; and
Initiation.

Although admitting that this construction could lend itself to

an inquiry of an anthropological and/or philosophical type, it would
not be of much use to the historian.
In the intellectual climate of the 1960s and 1970s, scholarly
philosophers and historians tended to see in the esoteric currents (as
well as in various forms of spirituality) of the past a sort of counter-culture that would have been generally beneficial to humanity
and from which it would be in the best interests of our disenchanted
era to learn. Belonging to this movement are a certain number of
personalities connected with the Eranos group, such as Carl Gustav
Jung, Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin, Ernst Benz, Gilbert Durand, or
Joseph Campbell. Certainly, the Eranos Conferences held at Anscona
(Switzerland) from 1933 to 1984, of which all the Proceedings have
been published, have contributed to stimulate the interest of a good
part of the academic world, as much for comparativism in the history
of religions as for various forms of esotericism. However, because of
their mainly apologetic orientation, they have not failed to give rise
to reservations on the part of researchers of a more strictly historical
orientation, notably of those whose works bear on esotericism understood in the sixth sense of the term. This is also the period when
Frances A. Yates (infra) described the Renaissance magus as a rebel
opposed to the dogmas of the established Churches and, later, to the

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pretentions of mechanistic science (although Yates purpose was not

apologetic in character).
Among the historians of esotericism understood in the sixth
sense, it is appropriate to distinguish two categories. On the one hand,
those who, very numerous, work on currents (movements, societies)
or particular authors; their aim is not (which is certainly their right)
to question the existence or the nature of the considered specialty
as such; this is discussed in chapter 5, section II. And, on the other
hand, the generalists, who intend to study esotericism as a whole
(of course, universalists like Riffard are in their manner generalists, but here we consider only those who adopt a historico-critical
approach). They study it considering it either lato sensu, or stricto
sensu (the twenty centuries of our era, or only the so-called modern
period, which begins at the Renaissance; cf. section II). Most of the
generalists adopt (following the example of the nongeneralists)
an empirical approach of a historico-critical type; at that point, it is
not surprising that they prove to have a real methodological concern.
In any event, they intend to distinguish themselves from the many
works of a religionist character, including those whose importance
they nevertheless recognize at least with regard to the origins of
their specialtythus, it is undeniable that the Eranos Conferences
(cf. supra), for example, have contributed to stimulate the interest of
the academic world in this same specialty.
The book (of a nonreligionist and nonuniversalist orientation)
of Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, published
in 1964, prepared the way for the academic recognition of this field of
study understood in the sixth sense. With respect to this work, it has
been possible to speak of a Yates paradigm, which rests on two ideas:
a) there would have existed from the fifteenth to the seventeenth
century a Hermetic tradition opposing the dominant traditions of
Christianity and rationality; b) it would have paradoxically constituted
an important positive factor in the development of the scientific revolution. These two propositions are debatable, but the Giordano Bruno
has nonetheless stimulated the lively interest of many researchers in
this notion of the Hermetic tradition applied not only to the period
of the Renaissance (studied by Yates), but also to those that followed
it and that preceded it. In fact, her paradigm found itself supplanted

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by another, introduced by the author of these lines (in 1992 notably,

in the first edition of this little book; cf. infra, section IV).

IV. A New Manner of Constructing the Object

In examining the possibility of founding a new paradigm, we decided
from the outset to differentiate ourselves from what esotericists or
their adversaries, and even from what historians however not ideologically engaged, could have understood by esotericism (or, like Yates,
Hermetic tradition). In fact, most of them have the tendency thus to
refer to an ideal type (other examples of ideal types: reason, faith,
sacred, magic, gnosis, mysticism, etc.), which they adopt at first
as an a priori and to which they strive, in a second phase, to make
particular phenomena correspond. Therefore, it was not a matter of
constructing or reconstructing a hypothetical esoteric doctrine, for
example, but of beginning by observing empirically (without an essentialist or apologetic presupposition) a dense series of varied materials taken in a historical period and a geographical area (the modern
period in the West). It was then a matter of asking ourselves if some of
these materials would have sufficient common characteristics (hence,
in the plural) so that, as a whole, they could be considered a specific field. For this to have been, it seemed essential to us that there
should be several characteristicsa single one would have ineluctably
conferred a universal scope on the constructed object, which it was
precisely a matter of avoiding.
In fact, a certain number of characteristics emerged from this
observation. Taken as a whole, they constitute a construct (a working
model)that of the object Modern Western Esotericism (as it has
been called at our suggestion). This object would be identifiable by the
simultaneous presence of a certain number of components distributed
according to variable proportions (in a text, in an author, in a trend,
even though obviously a discourse is never only esoteric). Four are
intrinsic (fundamental), in the sense that their simultaneous presence
suffices to identify the object. Two others are secondary, in the sense
that they appear only frequently, but they nonetheless confer a greater
flexibility on this construct.

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The four fundamental characteristics are as follows:

1. The idea of universal correspondences. Non-causal correspondences operate between all the levels of reality of the universe, which
is a sort of theater of mirrors inhabited and animated by invisible
forces. For example, there would exist relationships between the heavens (macrocosm) and the human being (microcosm), between the
planets and the parts of the human body, between the revealed texts
of religions (the Bible, principally) and what Nature shows us, between
these texts and the History of humanity.
2. The idea of living Nature. The cosmos is not only a series of
correspondences. Permeated with invisible but active forces, the whole
of Nature, considered as a living organism, as a person, has a history,
connected with that of the human being and of the divine world. To
that are often added interpretations, heavy with implications, of the
passage from Romans 7:1922 according to which suffering Nature,
subject to the exile and to vanity, also awaits its deliverance.
3. The role of mediations and of the imagination. These two notions
are mutually complementary. Rituals, symbols charged with multiple
meanings (mandala, Tarot cards, biblical verse, etc.), and intermediary
spirits (hence, angels) appear as so many mediations. These have the
capacity to provide passages between different levels of reality, when
the active imagination (the creative or magical imaginationa
specific, but generally dormant faculty of the human mind), exercised
on these mediations, makes them a tool of knowledge (gnosis), indeed,
of magical action on the real.
4. The experience of transmutation. This characteristic comes to
complete the three preceding ones by conferring an experiential
character on them. It is the transformation of oneself, which can be
a second birth; and as a corollary that of a part of Nature (e.g., in
a number of alchemical texts).
As far as the two so-called secondary characteristics are concerned, they are, on the one hand, a practice of concordance: It is a
matter of positing a priori that common denominators can exist among
several different traditions, indeed among all of them, and then of
undertaking to compare them with a view to finding a higher truth that
overhangs them. And it is, on the other hand, the emphasis put on
the idea of transmission: Widespread in these esoteric currents especially

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since the eighteenth century, it consists in insisting on the importance

of channels of transmission; for example, transmission from master
to disciple, from the initiator to the initiable (self-initiation is not
possible). To be valuable or valid, this transmission is often considered
necessarily to belong to an affiliation whose authenticity (regularity)
is considered genuine. This aspect concerns the Western esoteric currents especially starting at the time when they began to give birth to
initiatic societies (i.e., starting from the mid-eighteenth century).
This model amounted, in fact, to constructing the very object of
a specialty for which no theoretical construct (at least, of an empiricocritical character) had yet been proposed. It often has been employed
by other researchers, even though, like any working model, it has been
the object of some criticism relative to some of its implications. As
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, for example, has remarked, it would not sufficiently account for the importance of movements like the pietism of
the seventeenth century, or for the process of secularization undergone
by the esoteric currents of the nineteenth and the twentieth. Anyhow,
it is an acknowledged fact that no construct should be considered as
a truth by its proponent; actually, it is nothing but a provisional
heuristic tool meant to revive fresh methodological thinking. To wit,
a number of scholars have contributed, subsequently, to refine our
working tool (infra, section V).
It seemed to us that the expression form of thought (however
debatable the choice of this expression may be) could be applied to
this modern Western esotericism thus defined. Perhaps it could be
claimedwhich is not our purposethat it appears in other cultures
or periods as well. Still it would be appropriate to confine ourselves to
the empirical observation of the facts; that is, not to hypostatize this
expression with a view to legitimating the idea according to which
there would exist a sort of universal esotericism. Just as there is a
form of thought of an esoteric type, so there exist forms of thought of
a scientific, mystical, theological, and utopian type, for example (with
the proviso that each of them be understood within its specific historical, cultural context, and not sub specie aeternitatis). The specificity of
each consists of the simultaneous presence of a certain number of fundamental characteristics or components, a same component obviously
being able to belong to several forms of thought. Each brings its own

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approaches and procedures into play, its various manners of arranging

its components, of connecting them. In doing so, it constitutes for
itself a corpus of references, a culture.
Certain components can be common to several forms of thought;
for example, both to mysticism and to esotericism. With the latter, the scientific maintains complex and ambiguous relationships
of which certain Nature philosophies are the stake. It is especially
interesting to observe the oppositions, the rejections; they not only
are due to incompatible components between two forms of thought,
but also can result from an epistemological break within one of them.
Thus, before theology discarded (section II) its symbolic richness still
present in the Middle Ages, for example in the School of Chartres,
in that of Oxford, or in the case of a Saint Bonaventure (chapter 1,
section II), it was still close to what we here call modern Western
esotericism.
The first five of the six characteristics or components enumerated
above are not, let it be noted, of a doctrinal order. They appear much
rather as receptacles where various forms of the imaginaire can find a
place. For example, in the matter of correspondences we are dealing
as much with hierarchies of a Neoplatonic type (the above is placed
hierarchically higher than the below) as with more democratic views
(God is found as much in a seed as anywhere else; heliocentrism
changes nothing essential, etc.); in the matter of transmutation, as
much with that of Nature as with that of only humanity; in the matter of cosmogony, with schemes as much emanationist (God creates
the universe by emanation of Himself) as creationist (the universe
was created ex nihilo); in the matter of reincarnation, as much with a
defense as with a rejection of this idea; in the matter of attitude to
modernity, some easily integrate it, others reject all its values, and so
forth. In fact, for most of the representatives of this form of thought, it
is less a question of believing than of knowing (gnosis) and of seeing
(by the exercise of active, creative imaginationthird component).
Thus, to approach the studied field as a series of receptacles for the
imaginaire appears to us more in accordance with its very nature than
to attempt to define it starting from what would be a matter of particular explicit beliefs, professions of faith, doctrinesan attempt that,
according to us, could only lead to a dead end. This procedure has,

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moreover, the advantage of favoring the methodological approaches

of the pluri- and transdisciplinary type that permit situating our field
within the context of the humanities in general and the history of
religions in particular.

V. State of Research and Institutionalization

On this methodological plane, precisely, a number of generalists (section III), whose major contributions are quoted in the bibliography
appended to this book, have greatly contributed to establish the specialty on solid bases. In the first place, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, as much
by his major work, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism
in the Mirror of Secular Thought (1996), as by an impressive series
of articles subsequently published, all of fundamental importance.
He currently stands out as the main scholar among the generalists
of our specialtybesides the fact that he has also authored various
cogent studies on specific authors and currents. Comparable in his
approach is Marco Pasi; his scholarly works have hitherto focused
principally on the so-called occultist current, but he has completed
them with very pertinent working models to treat notions such as
occultism and magic in the context of modern Western esotericism
(cf. especially his thesis, La notion de magie dans le courant occultiste
en Angleterre [18751947], 2004). Let us also cite Jean-Pierre Brach
for his survey examinations of the historical characteristics proper to
esoteric currents, as they manifest themselves in the European cultural
arena from the end of the fifteenth century; Andreas Kilcher, who,
in studying the various usages of the polysemous term Kabbalah in
the modern West, has shed new light on the migrations and derivations of modern esoteric currents (Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala als
sthetisches Paradigma, 1998); Olav Hammer, one of whose works has
the title, evocative for our purpose: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of
Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (2001). Noteworthy too
is Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkes excellent introduction to our field (The
Western Esoteric Traditions. A Historical Introduction; 2008).
Still other generalists are situated within this body of theoretical thoughts that all rest on a solid work of texts. Among them

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are Arthur Versluis, by his articles published in his review Esoterica

and by a number of his works; and Monika Neugebauer-Wlk, who
attempts, in particular, to elucidate conceptually and historically the
nature of the relationships between esotericism and Christianity. The
recent works of Kocku von Stuckrad, notably his book Was ist Esoterik?
(2005), introduce a model of orientation that is just as historian,
rather different nevertheless from the preceding ones; its application
can, in our view, appear problematic as to the specificity of our field
but it is no less stimulating.
This list of generalists concerned with methodology is not
exhaustive, but rather suggests that the specialty, understood as
much lato sensu as stricto sensu (twenty centuries, or only five), could
already have been a subject of academic institutionalization. The process began in 1964. We owe to the Religious Sciences section of the
cole Pratique des Hautes tudes (Paris, Sorbonne) the merit of having, that year, been the first university institution to create within
itself a position entitled Directeur dtudes [Professor] (that of Franois
Secret) of the History of Christian Esotericism. The name changed
in 1979 (with Antoine Faivre) to the History of Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe (when Jean-Pierre
Brach took over, in 2002, the term mystical was deleted from that
chair title). At the University of Amsterdam, a Center for History of
Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (actually, for the History
of Western Esotericism as we understand it here) was created in 1999.
It has a specific chair (held by Wouter J. Hanegraaff), flanked by two
Assistant Professorships [Br: Senior lecturers], a secretary and two PhD
lecturers; it thus offers its students a complete academic trajectory. At
the University of Lampeter (United Kingdom), a Centre for Western
Esotericism saw the light of day in 2002; and in 2006, at that of Exeter
(United Kingdom), a chair entitled Western Esotericism, occupied by
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, forms the basis of the Exeter Center for
the Study of Esotericism (EXECESO). It too, like the Center in
Amsterdam, offers its students a complete academic trajectory. The
close collaboration established between Exeter, Amsterdam, and Paris,
and of these three with other institutions, is part of a development
with considerable impact on scholarship internationally.

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Besides these creations properly speaking, several initiatives were

taken. For example, at the University of Lausanne (Dpartement interfacultaire dHistoire et Sciences des Religions), a biannual program
was established in 2003 (by Silvia Mancini), dedicated to an introduction to the field of this specialty. In Germany, at the University Martin
Luther of Halle-Wittenberg, research programs were created (notably
by Monika Neugebauer-Wlk), dedicated to the esoteric currents of
the period of the Enlightenment as well as to the hermetico-esoteric
movements of the beginning of Modern Times. At Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Hereward Tilton led from 2004 to 2006 a
seminar called Introduction to the History of Western Esotericism.
We could give many more examples.
To these initiatives, we may add various symposia, colloquia,
and associations.
In the United States, the American Academy of Religionthe
largest association of religious sciences in the worlda program unit
Modern Western Esotericism was instituted for the annual congress
of 1980. Several others followed it, among which was Esotericism in
1986. It ceased to function in 1993 because of the perennialist orientation of its organizers, strongly criticized by several of the participants.
It then made way, starting in 1994, for programs of a historico-critical
type directed by James Santucci; first, under the title Theosophy and
Theosophic Thought, then in 1999 under that of Western Esotericism since the Early Modern Period. Since 2004 this program unit
has become Western Esotericism; under the direction of Allison
Coudert, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, and Cathy Guttierez. It also follows
a strictly historian orientation. Let us note that these last reformulations (from 1994 to 2004) coincided with the revival of the process
of institutionalization and professionalization in several countries (cf.
supra), begun in the wake of the creation of the Parisian chair in
1964. Still in the United States, new associations of an international
character saw the light of day, which work in this same spirit. Thus,
the Association for the Study of Esotericism created in 2002, directed
by Arthur Versluis and Allison Coudert; among the conferences that
it has organized appears notably Esotericism, Art and Imagination
(University of Davis, California, 2006).

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Besides these properly American initiatives, in the context of

the International Association for the History of Religion (which holds
its congress every five years), a workshop Western Esotericism and the
Science of Religion (Proceedings published, cf. bibliography) was created in 1995 in Mexico City. Two other workshops followed it: Western Esotericism and Jewish Mysticism (Durban, 2000) and Western
Esotericism and Polemics (Tokyo, 2005). The Association for International Research on Esotericism and of the Religious Sciences section
of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes held the conference Autour
de loeuvre de Frances A. Yates (18991981): Du rveil de la tradition hermtique la naissance de la science moderne (Paris, 2001).
At Esalen (California), a program of four symposia was established:
The Varieties of Esoteric Experience (2004), Hidden Intercourse: Eros
and Sexuality in Western Esotericism (Proceedings published in 2008),
Hidden Truths, Novel Truths (2006), Western Esotericism and Altered
States of Consciousness (2007). In such a context are situated one of
the nine sessions of the international conference Religious History of
Europe and Asia of September 2006 at Bucharest, whose theme was
Hermetic and Esoteric Currents, and the international conference
Forms and Currents of Western Esotericism of October 2007 at Venice
(Proceedings published in 2008).
Let us mention finally the European Society for the Study of
Western Esotericism (http://www.esswe.org/), created in 2002. This
place of exchange and information brings together many researchers
from the whole world and has already organized two international conferences: Constructing Tradition, Means and Myths of Transmission
in Western Esotericism (University of Tbingen, 2007, Proceedings
forthcoming), and Capitals of European Esotericism and Transcultural
Dialogue (University of Strasbourg, 2009, Proceedings forthcoming).
The list would be long of all the collective works, articles of a
methodological and philological nature, and so on, which are of interest to the generalist and which have seen the light of day in various
countries for about fifteen years. To some of the publications already
mentioned, it is appropriate especially to mention the Dictionary of
Gnosis and Western Esotericism, published in 2005. Its two volumes
comprise some four hundred articles written by about one hundred
and eighty collaborators and cover the field of Western esotericism

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from Late Antiquity until today; cf. in cauda the bibliography, which
also includes a list of specialized libraries and journals (not least the
biannual Aries. Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, published
since 2002). And because the bibliography does not include the titles
of articles but only of books, it seems appropriate to mention here the
copious annual rubric entitled Bulletin dhistoire des sotrismes,
held by the generalist Jerme Rousse-Lacordaire since 1996 in the
Revue des Sciences philologiques et thologiques (his book reviews gathered in this Bulletin already constitute a wealth of information).

VI. Past and Present Obstacles to the

Recognition of This Specic Field
Hence, after a long period of marginalization, this specific field is
increasingly the subject of official recognition. However, four obstacles
have delayed this recognition, more or less continuing to slow its
development.
The first obstacle is the existence of approaches of a religionist/
universalist character. This has been sufficiently discussed in section
III for it to be superfluous to insist on the necessity, for historians,
to distinguish themselves clearly from such approacheswhich, obviously, does not imply for as much that they should refrain from making
a statement about their philosophical pertinence.
The second obstacle is the confusionism favored by the first
of the meanings discussed in section I. We often see even serious
people, specialists of particular disciplines, employ esotericism as a
portmanteau (or blanket) word for lack of anything better, with
the complicity of their readers and publishers, to refer to some of
the areas they treat (such as imaginaire, initiatic or fantasy literature,
religious symbolism, artistic works associated with some aura of mystery, etc.) This tendency is due to the more or less implicit adoption
of a received idea that spread little by little in the West, especially
since the nineteenth century. It consists in positing the existence of
a sort of counter-culture, vaguely understood as the whole of what is
covered by the first of the six meanings of esotericism. And by the
effect of a curious reversal, it happens that this word no longer refers

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to that whole, but is found summoned to refer strangely to a single

aspect of magic and/or occult sciences. For example, in the Dictionnaire historique de la magie et des sciences occultes (2006), directed by
Jean-Michel Sallmann, appears the entry Western esotericism. Thus,
for Sallmann, Western esotericism is one of the aspects of what he
understands by magic and occult sciences, on the same level as
Miracles, Cult of saints, Unicorn, Fairies, and so onentries,
among so many others of the same type, presented in this dictionary.
In addition, just as we fail to understand why an image, a theme or a
motif would be esoteric (cf. supra, section I, the remarks concerning the first meaning), so it appears to us at least strange to posit
that miracles, the cult of saints, the unicorn, fairies (so many images,
themes or motifs) come under magic and occult knowledge.
The third obstacle is due to the residual influence of theological
models or presuppositions in the study of religions in general and that
of Christianity in particular. Even though the History of Religions
had begun, since the nineteenth century, to emancipate itself from
Christian theology, people had nonetheless long continued to adopt
insufficiently critical (mainly crypto-Catholic) views. They saw the
esoteric currents as no more than marginal heresies or more or less
condemnable superstitionsalthough in fact they generally appear
to be much less marginal than transversal. To start from doctrinal elements only perpetuates misunderstandings; with the aid of bits
and pieces of theology or metaphysics taken here and there, one can
construct a heresy that does not exist and then have a good time
criticizing it. Now, even granted that the discourses we here qualify
as esoteric sometimes contain heretical propositions with regard to
religious institutions, this is in no way what defines these discourses
as esoteric. Indeed, a heresy, in order to be considered as such, must
be formulated in terms of concepts incompatible with other concepts
that constitute a dogma. Now, esoteric discourses are generally much
less of the order of the concept than of the image, and more generally
of mythical thought.
Moreover, this form of thoughtas springs out from the following chaptersfrequently penetrates most of the established religions.
Catholicism obviously does not escape it. Contrary to what many

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